A student leader was fatally shot in the western university city of San Cristobal after a long day of street clashes in which Venezuelan security forces attacked and dismantled barricades at key intersections, according to the city’s mayor.

Local TV reporter Beatriz Font said there were unconfirmed reports of at least two others wounded by gunfire after dark on Monday in the city of 600,000 people where student-led protests erupted last month and where anti-government unrest has been fiercest.

The human rights group PROVEA tweeted that one student was seriously wounded by a bullet.

The slain student leader, Daniel Tinoco, was shot in the chest after dark, San Cristobal Mayor Daniel Ceballos said on Twitter. The opposition politician did not say who might have killed Tinoco, but tweeted that armed paramilitaries allied with the government known as “colectivos” had battled protesters along with the National Guard.

Font said Tinoco was “one of the students who was always out on Carabobo Avenue [manning barricades] giving interviews. He was really enthusiastic.”

Earlier in the day, the mayor had said the clashes were disrupting life in San Cristobal.

“Here the city is pretty well paralysed,” Ceballos told AP.

First foreign death

Also on Monday, a Chilean woman was shot dead while clearing a barricade put up by anti-government protesters, the first foreign fatality during a month of civil unrest in Venezuela, authorities said.

The deaths of Gisela Rubilar, 47, who was studying in the western Venezuelan city of Merida, and of a protester shot in the border state of Tachira, has brought the number of fatalities in five weeks of unrest to at least 22, Reuters news agency reported.

“She was ambushed by extreme right-wing groups … She was vilely murdered with a shot in the eye,” Alexis Ramirez, the governor of Merida state, told reporters, blaming the killing of Rubilar on unidentified demonstrators in the Andean city.

Students and opponents of President Nicolas Maduro have been maintaining street barricades in various cities since last month, demanding the president’s resignation and solutions to problems of rampant crime and economic shortages.

The barriers have become frequent flashpoints for violence between protesters, police and government supporters.

Hungry In Venezuela? Take A Number

With Venezuela declaring war on the black-market dollar (and any and all capitalist free-market activity that produces margins above government mandates) the stories of empty shelves of toilet paper and food continue - as do the bloody protests (despite President Maduro's proclamation that the 'terrorists' have been beaten).

Venezuelan protesters digging in for the long haul

POSTED AT 7:21 PM ON MARCH 10, 2014 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN

It’s been about a month since groups of thousands of Venezuelan students ignited protests in cities across Venezuela over the country’s ever-deteriorating crime scene and economic instability, and while it sounds like the protesters and government forces have settled into a kind of stasis-mode, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. Venezuelans gather, march, build barricades, etcetera; the regime’s police forces aggressively and sometimes violently push them to disperse — and meanwhile, Venezuela’s rampant political and economic problems are no closer to solutions.

Hundreds of National Guardsmen in riot gear and armoured vehicles prevented an “empty pots march” from reaching Venezuela’s food ministry on Saturday to protest against chronic food shortages. …

Later on Saturday, several hundred student protesters trying to block streets with barricades skirmished with riot police who fired tear gas in the wealthy Caracas district of Chacao, in what has become a near daily ritual. …

Earlier, more than 5,000 protesters banged pots, blew horns and whistles and carried banners in the capital to decry crippling inflation and shortages of basics including flour, milk and toilet paper. Similar protests were held in at least five other cities. …

“There’s nothing to buy. You can only buy what the government lets enter the country because everything is imported. There’s no beef. There’s no chicken,” said Zoraida Carrillo, a 50-year-old marcher in Caracas.

Even the celebrations for the one-year anniversary of Chavez’s death last week didn’t do much to deter the protesters, and if Maduro’s ideas for action are in a holding pattern, so are his public excuses about the reasons behind the systemic economic and crime problems: Hey, all of the violence from these protests is being instigated by nefarious imperial and opposition sources! We had nothing to do with any of it, it’s all a plot backed by the United States! Rabble rabble rabble!

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden calls Venezuela’s situation alarming in remarks published Sunday, suggesting its government is using “armed vigilantes” against peaceful protesters and accusing it of “concocting false and outlandish conspiracy theories” about the United States. …

“The situation in Venezuela reminds me of previous eras, when strongmen governed through violence and oppression; and human rights, hyperinflation, scarcity, and grinding poverty wrought havoc on the people of the hemisphere,” Biden told El Mercurio. …

Despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary, Maduro on Sunday denied that armed paramilitary supporters of the government have employed violence against protesters.

“The only violent armed groups in the street are those of the right,” he told the crowd.

In a statement issued by the presidency, Maduro also accused the opposition was “receiving financing from the United States” to undermine “a solid democracy that has had the popular backing in 18 elections over 15 years.” He offered no evidence.